It's a whirlwind star of the year for big film releases. Infinity War, Deadpool 2 and Black Panther being the most notable thus far. It's easy for a movie to be lost in the blockbuster releases and sadly that seems to be what happened to Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Spoilers As Usual

Ron Howard as Director

This is the fourth Star Wars film to be released since Disney took control of Lucas film. Sadly this film is probably most known for the multiple problems it ran into throughout production. The original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, left the project just 6 months into production when notable director, Ron Howard, took over directing responsibilities. Howard, best known for directing The DaVinci Code, did an amazing job in taking a semi-completed film and turning it into a respectable movie that stood well on it's own away from the Star Wars franchise.

Howard had already experienced directing a space-set film after overseeing the production of docudrama Apollo 13 so when it was announced it was he that was going to complete the film I was pretty optimistic. I'm glad I was because this film was thoroughly enjoyable. Whether or not you were previously a fan of the franchise this film is still a great addition to the universe.

Notable Performances

The film's lead character was portrayed by American 'Hail, Caesar!' actor, Alden Ehrenreich. He was the subject of another production issue report that claimed that Ehrenreich has to take acting lessons to improve his role as Han Solo. Looking back at the film you would either think "Eh, he didn't need those lessons." or "Wow those lessons really worked!".

Along with Donald Glover's appearance as Lando Calrissian, Ehrenreich was one of the stand-out performances throughout the whole film. The actor replicated Han Solo's mannerisms well all whilst making the role his own instead of doing a hard-copy of Harrison Ford's version.

The Story

The film has been criticised for not adding anything new to the franchise to which I have to sadly agree with. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, there wasn't really much more information injected into the Star Wars universe. It has a few little new bits of information like where Solo got his name and how he met Chewbacca but there was no new story-changing details.

That Darth Maul Cameo at the end though...

Final Thoughts

I would pay to see this film again. It's a shame to see how poorly this instalment has performed at the Box Office and it deserves alot more. To me, this film was far better than The Last Jedi and on par with The Force Awakens, both of which made a phenomenal amount of money.

The performances were fun and not pure imitations of the original versions. I am satisfied with the movie in general although I would have loved a bit more information to be added to the title character like his full boy-hood origin.

I would also like to say that L3 was one of the worst droids in the franchise an there was no point of her being there even if it was just for comic relief.

So my girlfriend and I were planning a little trip to London in the midst my final university exam period. We all know how expensive London can be so we planned that we'd head to a chain restaurant that we looked up beforehand, The Slug & Lettuce.

We'd researched the menu for the bar beforehand hand liked the food we saw, plus the prices were not too bad either. We underestimated how busy it'd be so we didn't reserve a table beforehand. Our bad, it is London after all. Upon arrival, we were greeted quite abruptly with "Have you booked?". Of course, though, we hadn't. But a table was still available anyway so we were seated.

The waitress informed us that she would be back in a few minutes to take our order. Upon looking at the menu my girlfriend decided to have the Smothered Chicken (£10.29) and I wanted to have something different to what I usually eat when out and went for the Chicken Tikka Masala. We also decided to treat ourselves to a Zombie cocktail each (£9.95 2-4-1). It took a while to place this order since the waitress seemed more concerned with 'chilling' at another table of presumably her friends.

Once the drinks arrived and we tried them we couldn't complain too much, but that's where the lack of complaining ended. Let's talk about Kirsty's food first with a game I like to call "Spot the Piece of Chicken".

For reader convenience, I have pointed out the poultry.

It was dry, bland and even a 3-year-old child would call it bite-sized. I mean, for over £10 you'd expect your chicken to be a bit thicker than the knife you're cutting it with. When I say cutting I mean probing. I guess a good thing to say about this meal is that you can admire the majority of the plate that you're eating it off? Slug and Lettuce? More like Slug and LetUs disappoint you.

Now for my lovely curry...

Once I got the plate to stop sliding around on the...other plate... I got to taste it. Not going to lie, it wasn't the best curry I had ever eaten in my life. The rice tasted like it had been cooking for as long as it had been grown for. The chicken, like Kirsty's smothered chicken, was on the dry side as well as bland. The sauce looked like it was mostly water and could have done with being simmered longer.

We were terribly disappointed with this meal. Terrible tasting food, you don't get much for your money, and chicken you could replace your window panes with. All in all, I give this place a 2/10. That's 1 mark for the table not wobbling and 1 for the fact that the drinks "weren't too bad".

It's that time again, time to look back on what we have achieved on this blog throughout 2017. Looking at view numbers, records and just seeing how far we've come in just 12 months.

1) There have been 39 posts made to this blog in 2017.

That's 0.75 a week.

The third highest number of posts ever in a single year.

Over twice as many posts as 2016 (17).

2) The months with the most posts:

August (7)

December (6)

June (5)

3) The months with the most views:

April (5,822)

June (5,074)

September (3,484)

4) The most views came from (All Time) :

Facebook (2,226)

Twitter (1,518)

Google (1,129)

5) Countries most viewed by (All Time):

United States (33,219)

United Kingdom (15,253)

Israel (14,732)

6) Brands Worked With - 11!

That's more than the previous 4 years combined, almost 1 post a month was sponsored and without them, I probably wouldn't be writing this blog still, so thank you.

It's been a bit of a slow one this year what with uni ending, a new career beginning along with a whole bunch of other stuff, but this blog will not end anytime soon and I will devote as much of my time as I can to keeping it alive.

All Statistics Are Correct At The Time Of This Post And Do Not Include This Post Itself